Cognitive, Cultural, and Linguistic Sources of a Handshape Distinction Expressing Agentivity

Abstract

In this paper the cognitive, cultural, and linguistic bases for a pattern of conventionalization of two types of iconic handshapes are described. Work on sign languages has shown that handling handshapes (H-HSs: those that represent how objects are handled or manipulated) and object handshapes (O-HSs: those that represent the class, size, or shape of objects) express an agentive/non-agentive semantic distinction in many sign languages. H-HSs are used in agentive event descriptions and O-HSs are used in non-agentive event descriptions. In this work, American Sign Language (ASL) and Italian Sign Language (LIS) productions are compared (adults and children) as well as the corresponding groups of gesturers in each country using "silent gesture." While the gesture groups, in general, did not employ an H-HS/O-HS distinction, all participants (signers and gesturers) used iconic handshapes (H-HSs and O-HSs together) more often in agentive than in no-agent event descriptions; moreover, none of the subjects produced an opposite pattern than the expected one (i.e., H-HSs associated with no-agent descriptions and O-HSs associated with agentive ones). These effects are argued to be grounded in cognition. In addition, some individual gesturers were observed to produce the H-HS/O-HS opposition for agentive and non-agentive event descriptions-that is, more Italian than American adult gesturers. This effect is argued to be grounded in culture. Finally, the agentive/non-agentive handshape opposition is confirmed for signers of ASL and LIS, but previously unreported cross-linguistic differences were also found across both adult and child sign groups. It is, therefore, concluded that cognitive, cultural, and linguistic factors contribute to the conventionalization of this distinction of handshape type.

Of the body and the hands: patterned iconicity for semantic categories

“…Previously, we distinguished between the h a n d l i n g strategy (as in Figure 3a), where the signer's hand represents a human hand in action, and i n st r u m e n t strategy (as in Figure 3b), where the signer's hand additionally profiles the shape of the referent tool (Padden et al, , 2015. Our distinction between the two iconic strategies can also be found in work by others (Goodglass & Kaplan, 1963;Overton & Jackson, 1973;Boyatzis & Watson, 1993;O'Reilly, 1995;Brentari et al, 2012Brentari et al, , 2015. Here, we collapse the two strategies together as m a n i p u l at i o n to highlight their common property, that the signer's body represents the body of a human agent using the referent, and that the form includes motion of the signer's arm representing human action.…”

“…All participants in the Gesture group were tested in a monolingual spoken English setting and reported that they had no knowledge of a sign language. We acknowledge that testing groups of homogeneous speakers of different languages, as reported in Padden et al (2013) and Brentari et al (2015), could be a future extension for more in-depth understanding of cross-cultural variation in gesture patterns. However, such a goal is beyond the scope of the present study.…”

“…In individual responses, the forms are coded based on whole sign/gesture form-meaning mappings that include both movement and handshape (not just handshape, as in Brentari et al, 2012Brentari et al, , 2015 and the relationship of the hands to the rest of the body.…”

“…(Goodglass & Kaplan, 1963;Supalla, 1982;Brentari, Coppola, Mazzoni, & Goldin-Meadow, 2012;Müller, Bressem, & Ladewig, 2013). Padden, Hwang, Lepic, and Seegers (2015) and others (Goldin-Meadow, So, Özyürek, & Mylander, 2008;Brentari, Renzo, Keane, & Volterra, 2015;Strickland, Geraci, Chemla, Schlenker, Kelepir, & Pfau, 2015) use the different responses of non-signing gesturers compared to signers as indicative of emergent properties of spontaneous gesture and sign languages. The comparison across groups provides an opportunity to examine possible pathways for grammaticization and conventionalization from emergent to established sign language lexicons and grammars.…”

Separating viewpoint from mode of representation in iconic co-speech gestures: insights from Danish narratives

“…For the purposes of this paper, I reduce Müller's four modes of representation to two, h a n d s r e p r e s e n t i n g h a n d s and h a n d s r e p r e s e n t i n g e n t i t i e s ( see Brentari, Coppola, Mazzoni, &Goldin-Meadow, 2012, andBrentari et al, 2014, for use of similar terminology). Following the approach taken by Alibabli (2008, 2010), I assume that there is a link between type of imagery and different types of gestures.…”